@alpha-sdk/client

TypeScript client for the Alpha Camera REST API — control Sony cameras via REST.

Public example app:

alpha-sdk-typescript

Install

npm install @alpha-sdk/client

Usage

import { AlphaSDKClient } from "@alpha-sdk/client";

const client = new AlphaSDKClient({
  environment: "http://localhost:8080",
});

// Discover cameras
const listing = await client.cameras.list();
console.log(listing.cameras);

// Connect, shoot, disconnect
const cameraId = listing.cameras[0].id;
await client.cameras.connect({ cameraId, mode: "remote" });
await new Promise((r) => setTimeout(r, 500)); // settle (see Recipe 5)
await client.properties.setPriorityKey({ cameraId, setting: "pc-remote" });
await client.actions.afShutter({ cameraId });
await client.cameras.disconnect({ cameraId });

Resources exposed

Accessor	What it covers
`client.server`	Server status, logs, shutdown
`client.cameras`	Discover, connect, disconnect
`client.properties`	Read/write properties (ISO, aperture, priority key, etc.)
`client.actions`	Shoot, focus near/far, zoom, movie recording
`client.liveView`	Enable/start/stop live view stream
`client.sdCard`	List + download SD card files
`client.settings`	Save-info, LUT import, settings-file up/download

Every REST endpoint in the OpenAPI spec has a method here.

Recipes — SSE, live view, server lifecycle, discovery

Some patterns aren't REST and are deliberately not generated into this client — they ship as copy-paste recipes on crsdk.app:

Pattern	Recipe
Real-time events (SSE)	SSE events
Live view frame polling	Live view polling
Server subprocess lifecycle	Server subprocess
Camera discovery / hot-plug	Discovery + reconnect
Retry with backoff	Retry + backoff
React hook	React hook

Why recipes instead of a wrapper library? These patterns are standard JS/TS idioms (fetch streaming, setInterval, child_process.spawn). Owning the code in your app is easier to debug, easier to modify, and easier for AI coding assistants to reason about than an opaque library abstraction.

Error handling

Every non-2xx response throws a typed subclass of AlphaSDKError:

import { AlphaCameraRestApi, AlphaSDKError } from "@alpha-sdk/client";

const { BadRequestError, NotFoundError } = AlphaCameraRestApi;

try {
  await client.cameras.connect({ cameraId: "unknown", mode: "remote" });
} catch (err) {
  if (err instanceof BadRequestError) {
    console.error("400:", (err.body as any).message);
  } else if (err instanceof AlphaSDKError) {
    console.error(`${err.statusCode}: ${err.message}`);
  }
}

404 is used only on a smaller subset of endpoints (for example missing live view frames or camera-specific SD-card download targets). Connection-status and disconnect remain 200 even when nothing is currently connected.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.